ANOTHER ‘JOY’ OF MOTHERHOOD (1)

ANOTHER ‘JOY’ OF MOTHERHOOD (1)

Chikaima stares at her breasts; they are swollen and heavy with milk.  She sits by the baby’s cot, waiting endlessly for him to wake up and suck out the ache in her breasts. But the baby keeps stirring from sleep but never waking up. She opens the toilet door noisily but Chidumaga remains still. She starts playing Phyno’s “Connect,” one of the many songs she played to make Chidumaga move while he was still in the womb. She smiles at the thought of her fear that the baby is not moving or even rousing in the slightest way. She remembers pacing up and down the large expanse of the living room in a violent march past while silently humming “left! Right!” repeatedly yet the baby barely moves. She will quickly pick her cellphone and play Phyno’s “Connect” to the loudest volume and Chidumaga will spring up to life, hands and legs pushing through her swollen belly in irregular shapes and tickling the breath out of her. Life knew no other bliss.

“Icho my moni wete kollati wete kollati

D boy na achi ma onwete alerti, nwete alerti

Do not even messi with my konneti….”

A naughty smile plays out on her lips at the thought of “reviving” her son with such music but then she has a niche for rapidly-applied poetry−rap, and the Afro brand in the likes of Phyno, Ill Bliss and Olamide appeal to her in many ways. Chidumaga smiles and stirs a little from the sound of the very music that jostles him awake while he was still in the womb. But that was all; a smile and a stir. As her heart grows with frustration, so does her breast with milk, milk that has now broken through her breastfeeding bra, the breast pads and now drips through the yarns of her lovely post-partum gown. It is her first baby; she has read lots of information on pre-natal, natal and post-natal experiences but here comes the difficult part; the reality of it all. She is living it! She angrily kills the music playing from her phone. Even Phyno couldn’t do the magic. She pulls her stretchy gown a bit lower from the neckline to check the source of her pain. Her green veins are remarkably evident through her yellow skin as her nipples stand like pigeon beaks with milk streaming down.

She shrugs her shoulders in defiance; she is an advocate of fresh milk, she will only feed her baby directly from her breast for the next six months before considering water, formula and all that comes with it. Her Masters dissertation in Child Health of the Department of Public Health is a research in which she advocates for direct breastfeeding of newborns to avoid infections and to encourage mother-child bonding. But the idea of dashing out to buy a breast pump and empty her breast of their watery heaviness becomes more appealing as she watches Chidumaga sleep soundly. She picks her ATM Card and convinces herself that she is only going for a stroll in the street to take her mind off the whole challenge. But her hurrying feet propels her to Baby-Mother Super Mart where she bought both the electric and manual breast pumps. On her way home, she keeps looking back as though one of her schoolmates or Professors who were present during the very radical defence that earned her an A in her dissertation will see her. Guilt.

“Sometimes a mother has to compromise,” she consoles herself.

 She rushes home, sterilizes the items and begins the extracting process. She fills all the four feeding bottles that come with the two kinds of pump and gradually, her breasts deflates to their natural sizes like punctured balloons and their muscles relax, hiding the veins.

“Four full bottles, I must be a milk factory!”

She drops all four in the fridge telling herself that she will warm them in hot water as soon Chidumaga is ready to eat.

******

 
Hyacinth staggers through the gate harassing the gateman as usual by shaking his head violently.

“Old Paapa!”

“The day wey robbers go come here na you go first tear race.”

Paapa angrily dusts his head as though hyacinth had poured dust on it.

“Hyacinth! I am a Professional Gateman and not a Security Officer. I do not carry weapons.”

Hyacinth laughs hysterically and staggers to the main house. He sits on the kitchen stool trying without success to shake off the alcohol that is gradually taking charge of his entire system. He opens the fridge and his eyes glow at the sight of the four jars of palmwine. If he had known that his elder brother had supplies of palmwine he wouldn’t have gone to the bar to incur debt. It’s a full house as relatives are around to celebrate the arrival of Agumba’s son. They must have brought the jars of palmwine from the village. He stares at the glorious jars again as his vision begins to fail. The jars are now eight. He takes the first jar of palmwine and empties it. By the time he emptied the fourth jar, he realized there were no more jars left. He licks his lazy moustache and staggers to his room.

Chidumaga’s tiny voice slices through the air awakening Chikaima’s mother who carries him off the cot and hands him over to be fed. As Kaima tries to unbuckle her breast pouch, she remembers her full bottles and smiles. Besides saving milk for her convenience, she also saves her nipples of the pain from her baby’s constant gum-chewing.

“Mama, there’s no milk here,” she says hitting her breasts.

“I emptied all into feeding bottles and stored in the fridge.”

“Finally someone is thinking beyond lecture room postulations. Go get my grandson’s milk fast,” says Grandma laughing like she always does whenever she wins an argument with her unyielding and incorrigible daughter.

Kaima dashes to the living room visibly disturbed by Chidumaga’s now high-pitched cry.

“He must be very hungry,” she thought aloud.      

She opens the fridge and could not find her filled feeding bottles.

She looks around and finds parts of the feeding bottles inside the waste bin and the remaining on the floor beside it.

Her head felt heavy and her heart sinks. She staggers a little as her legs feel like sagged dunlop in need of extra support. She rushes to her baby and puts the breast in his mouth but Chidumaga continues crying after sucking for awhile. Kaima rushes into the kitchen and drinks hot water but that wasn’t enough to stimulate her breast. The baby keeps crying. She picks her ATM card and dashes off to the same mart and purchased baby formula. She picks up one of the feeding bottles from the floor, rinses from the sink and without sterilizing she mixes the milk and warm water and rushes to the room to feed her baby. Her mother stares at her in dismay.

“Mum do not stare like that. Somebody poured away all the milk,” she says cursing.

Grandma walks to the kitchen and sees the mess.

“No one in their right senses will empty milk from feeding bottles in such manner”  

She goes back to her daughter.

“This must be Agumba’s handwork! You bought him over with that Direct Feeding Theory of yours!”

“Mum my husband is not callous. He will at least consult me. You know he’s a perfect gentleman.

“Is Hyacinth back?”

“I don’t know he should be somewhere, drinking.”

“Yea, drinking breastmilk,” sighs GrandMa.

“It must be one of the guests mum. You know all these village people. I will deal with this at my time.”

Grandma silently walks to Hyacinth’s room, taps him awake and asks,

“Did you by any chance drink the breastmilk in the fridge?”

Hyacinth throws himself on the floor and empties his belly of both palmwine and breastmilk.

Kaima stares at her son sucking the feeding bottle silently and making satisfying sounds. She grows jealous of both the bottle and the content as she reminisces on how she broke all her breastfeeding rules in one day. She remembers her hallowed defence which caused a little debate between the external supervisor from the University of Ibadan and her project supervisor at the University of Lagos. She recalls her last line, “If you must nurse a newborn, do so directly from the mammary glands, to avoid infection and also to encourage mother-child bonding otherwise, hire a wet nurse! But she was single and full of ideas then; now she is a mother. She hugged Chidumaga tight and steps down the staircase to the living room downstairs to meet her mum who points at the door to Hyacinth’s room. She opens the door to behold Hyacinth on the floor in a pool of the mixture of breastmilk and palmwine. She hugs her son tighter and walks into the garden for fresh air. “The ‘Joys’ of Motherhood.”